WhatsApp Native Client for Windows and Mac Status

WhatsApp as the most popular free messaging platform, supports multiple platforms, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, etc.. Although the company launched WhatsApp web service for multiple browsers, but users more expect a complete WhatsApp app running on Windows and Mac.

Recently, Twitter account WABetaInfo found screenshots of WhatsApp translation website where you can see references to download links for Windows and Mac applications. However, there are not many details revealed about these apps. WhatsApp already has a Windows version, it just needs to convert in to a universal version, which to be made available on Windows 10, but it will need to quit Silverlight.

It’s not clear why WhatsApp would want to invest in developing native apps when it already has a web client. Although WhatsApp Web already has relatively complete features, and its advantage is obvious, the user can directly use it without having to download anything, and the web app also supports uploading files and desktop notifications in browsers like Chrome and Safari, But it lacks a very a commonly used feature ‘audio calls’, which is currently not possible with the web client and can be achieved with the native app.

So these clients would eventually allow for seamless usage and also enable WhatsApp to compete on a better footing with other web-based messaging apps like Slack.

Currently, there are a number of unofficial WhatsApp desktop apps are available for download on both Windows 10 and Mac OS X, which basically feature the Web versions wrapped in confetti. It looks like the time for those unofficial apps might be coming to a close though.

The twitter account does not provide a release date for the application, if you do not want to wait for a official version of WhatsApp for desktop, then you can temporarily download a third-party client that are nothing more than web wrappers are already up for grabs in the Windows 10 Store, such as WhatsAppWrapp by Dhananjay Odhekar, a wrapper version of the web feature for Windows 10.